


Family Practice

by prodigalsanyo



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Malcolm, Gen, Non-Consensual Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23579950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigalsanyo/pseuds/prodigalsanyo
Summary: What if Martin poisoned Gil first?  This is not Gil torture or torture porn despite canon violence.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	Family Practice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Twice_before_Friday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twice_before_Friday/gifts).



Officer Gil reported to dispatch that all was well in the Manhattan townhouse. He briefly nipped out to the cruiser to check the resident's name and driver's license number. Dr. Martin Whitly, M.D., white male, 38. As Gil anticipated, search pulled nothing for priors.

He had the cruiser to himself. Considering how safe Parkway Avenue was, even in the dead of night, he would drive the scenic route home where the rich really did up their Christmas decorations. That morning Jackie had almost made him late fussing at him about moving to a nicer place. Not that Gil didn’t want to. He could see himself in a house with his wife but changing neighborhoods would take them further from her family who were usually in trouble and needing help.

A tic pulsed in his forehead as he considered the future with his wife, their kids, and at least one of Jackie’s brothers or sisters. If they bought a whole house, it was likely one of her people would need the couch. Whereas if they upgraded to a three-bedroom apartment, they wouldn’t have space for long-term house guests.

Once he finished his last call for the shift without any troubles, Gil went in for one more examination of the premises and to take up Dr. Whitly on his offer of tea. It was too late for coffee and the wind chill raked the warmth from his bones. His right elbow twinged from an old patrol injury.

As directed, Dr. Whitly left the door closed but unlocked. Gil entered the vacant parlor area, welcomed by a perfectly steaming tray of beverage and oatmeal cookies studded with cranberry and chocolate chunks. The cookies appeared handmade but Gil waited for Martin's return. He stuck his chapped hands into his work overcoat, fingering the rosary beads and the wooden cross in his left pocket.

"Help yourself, Officer Arroyo. Excuse me for my disappearance. I had to put my boy to bed, the little scamp."

"I get how it can be, Dr. Whitly," assured Gil. "I babysat my nephews and nieces enough times. Unpaid labor."

"Please, call me Martin. I prefer to dispense with the formalities." Martin moved his hand as if to brush off pretension. "My mansion is grand and I have a string of letters after my name, but at the end of the day, these objects procure me no deep satisfaction."

"You're alright, Doc." Gil swallowed the tea, hot and good. "The name's Gil."

"Well, then. We'll get to know each other very well. How do you do," said Martin. His hand passed over the tea and closed around an oatmeal cookie.

"Not too shabby, Martin. I've got the wifey at home. She's sleeping by this time," said Gil. He gulped down more tea to finish his cup quickly. Despite chasing his heels this morning with her unhappy face, he was eager to sink into the bed which Jackie kept warm for him.

"Are you expected early in the morning after clocking out later tonight?" asked Martin.

"Hell no. I'm due in later," said Gil. "Back to back shifts are for the newbies. I'm not a young buck to be hazed like that."

"I imagine no one would miss you right away, Gil," said Martin with a wry but friendly smile.

"Just the wife. Maybe she not miss me either. She not happy with me. How you doing with your old lady?" said Gil.

"She’s madly in love," said Martin.

"Lucky son of a gun," said Gil. "How do you keep up with it? I can do the job most times, but some days I can't do both."

"It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house," quoted Martin.

"Happy wife, happy life," added Gil.

Gil raised his cup and then polished it off. Bitter was the aftertaste, but his belly was warm, he managed to put some fiber from the oatmeal cookies down the hatch, and his elbow didn't hurt him after his dose of tea. In fact, Gil hardly felt anything besides his eyelids.

"Thank you for the snacks, Martin." Gil dragged his carcass from the French chintz cushions. He debated checking the premises one more time when his feet were leaden. Usually when he was beat, his feet throbbed, but he was having trouble negotiating the marble floors.

Martin lugged an arm around Gil to assist, his voice soothing.

"There's one of the Milton heirlooms, the acrylic painting of Douglas who chipped in for the Revolution. Jessie's ancestor. She decorated the living room and this dining area we are presently stepping through. The place is hers, but I am allowed my own man cave, so to speak."

A large white door with a crystal handle opened to them silently, the hinges well greased.

"What's here? My exit?" Gil was muzzy. He could've sworn the stairs looked at him.

Martin chuckled genially. "In a metaphysical sense, yes. I will be escorting you off the mortal coil. Exit... Stage left."

Gil's face lulled into Martin's shoulder like an idiot who couldn't handle his drink. Their steps were noiseless on the stairs which Martin carpeted.

Gil had choice words to express his dismay and malcontent over this insane development.

Instead, he asked, "Weren't you wearing a gray sweater?"

"I am," said Martin. "Why?"

Gil's eyes rolled, almost blinded by vibrant red woven knit. 

"Fo'get bout it," said Gil. He knew when he was licked. He fumbled for his rosary but his numb fingers pinched the empty lining.

Martin glided him to an office area in the basement. He laid Gil prone and face down onto a workbench, his cool and sure hand cradling Gil's jaw and cheek to prevent undue injury. His arm tucked under Gil's pits to keep Gil's dead weight from slipping. Martin's hips pressed into him when he mounted Gil. Martin bunched up Gil's coat sleeve before gently tugging. 

He found Gil's wallet. "Virgil Jacob Crisanto Arroyo. 5'10". Age 38. You're a Leo. I'm an air sign myself."

Martin removed his sweater and donned Gil's jacket. "Tell me, do you identify as Hispanic?"

"No. Asswipe."

"I would have assumed by your full legal name that you have a Hispanic background," said Martin, frowning. He did not enjoy inconsistencies. 

"Fuck you."

"Please cooperate with me. The data must stay clean. What is your ethnicity?" He lightly smacked Gil's cheek. "I could put on your uniform, drive to the address listed on your driver's license. Jackie wouldn't doubt an officer of the law who comes knocking late."

"You shit. Dirty shit." Gil's face smeared the drool which accumulated. "Asian. Filipino. Half."

Gil wanted to toss his cookies, he was sick to his soul.

"Marvelous, Gil! I'm always looking to diversify my participants. Unfortunately my victims skew Caucasian with white Hispanics or a few middle class blacks. I hope with prolonged study to pick up more outliers such as yourself to include in my journals."

"We will continue our discussion on your background. Of particular interest to me is any history of chronic illness or recurrent conditions within your family down your maternal and paternal lineage. Alas, I must conceal your whereabouts before I leave you in trusted care. Where's a good cop bar that I may deposit your vehicle? I'm rather at the mercy of your recommendations."

Gil told him, so that Jackie wouldn't have to. Shoes and belt came off. Martin’s fingers curled beneath his nape as he spread Gil’s arms wide and plucked off his uniform. Excitement, wonder, and curiosity enlivened Martin’s features as he took Gil apart inside his mind and greedily stripped him with his hands.

A stethoscope, warmed in Martin's gleeful hands, pressed Gil's brown back.

Martin parked Gil into a hope chest, neither rough nor violent to preserve his specimen. Gil's eyes were frozen open as the clinical and fluorescent white lights winked out.

* * *

Malcolm’s stomach hurt when he woke up. He called the police last night but he did it close to bedtime. Kid logic dictated that crimes only went to police at night. As soon as he nuzzled into the cool pillow for another bedtime story, he realized his grave error. He was tempted to forget the whole mess when he finished up the school day and came home to have dinner with his parents. His father was on call for that evening, but he was at home with his beeper and that’s what mattered.

After one homework check, Malcolm and Ainsley were allowed to read or play quietly and watch TV before bedtime. Ainsley set up a tea party in the parlor area. The teacups were the size of her thumb and colored a maudlin purple. A ring of plastic fairies and one ceramic angel were invited to tea.

Malcolm was an honorary guest. He sat on the French chintz sofa reading one chapter of Nancy Drew mysteries while Ainsley gossipped with the fairies, questioning them for current news in the magical kingdom. 

Mother allowed them one cookie each. Malcolm broke his cookie in half when he thoughtlessly chomped down mid-read. A cranberry fell out of his mouth and rolled into the cushions. If it were simply cookie crumbles, he would’ve let it go. But the cranberry was incriminating. He dug it out from where it landed and popped it into his mouth. His fingers skimmed over a string of beads. It felt like one of Ainsley’s pearl and gemstone princess bracelets.

Reddish-brown beads crossed his palm. Malcolm flattened the mystery novel in his lap and tucked the beads into the book spine. It didn’t look like anything which his mother wore. The little wood cross on threadbare twine cemented the object as Unusual. He knew it was a rosary from strolling past cathedrals and Catholic schools with the nuns and priests.

Malcolm licked his lips and tasted chocolate at the corners of his mouth.

The rosary stayed inside his Nancy Drew book. Malcolm’s suspicions gathered weight when their French maid answered the door and interrupted their supper.

“Mrs. Whitly, police at the door. He says his name is Detective Sergeant Ian Turner.”

“My, how awful. What can they want?” asked Jessica. She bunched up her napkin and went with their maid. Martin was likely making his rounds at the hospital before he would return to the house. 

Malcolm and Ainsley played on the stairs, their ears straining to snoop. Stuffed animals and little fairy friends sat with them as props. From what they gleaned, before the French maid shooed them to their bedrooms, Martin would visit downtown to speak with police.

When Malcolm was certain that his father wasn’t in the house and that his mother would want him and Ainsley out of the way while she worried, Malcolm crept into the dining room and slipped through the basement door. He would’ve preferred to explore before sunset, but it was after 3 pm EST in winter.

The basement was cold, but Malcolm came prepared with a hot mug of chocolate and whipped cream. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He dared not lay his hand on anything inside his father’s workshop. His fingers curled around the mug but his stomach twisted. Fearfully, he imagined his father would simply notice what was moved.

When his eyes landed on the hope chest snugged under an electric blanket, Malcolm had to admit to himself that he was looking for a body. Maybe a nun or a priest.

The ceramic was slightly warm in his hands when Malcolm worked up the nerve to set the hot chocolate aside and drag the hope chest out of the shadows. While it was heavy and his lower back strained and his feet slipped on the concrete, Malcolm budged it by pushing each corner until the bottom scraped.

He lay his hand on top and pulled, his heart thumping from his chest and pounding into his skull. The chest wouldn’t open. Malcolm jiggled the clasp, gulping when it came apart. He screwed his eyes shut, averting his face, as he crouched down and raised his arms overhead. Malcolm cracked one eye and peeked down.

He stared into the box, flat, empty, and disheartening.

Malcolm was about to heave the lid shut when he noticed white lines scratched into the dull shine of waterproof lining. His fingertips felt along the scratches, confirming what he saw by feeling each line. His fingertips encountered a slight bulge warping the waxy lining. Malcolm rubbed at the lining until it wrinkled beneath his motions. The coated layer was already peeled. Malcolm helped it along until a small object clinked onto the bottom of the hope chest. It glinted and rolled before spinning onto its side.

Malcolm groped at it. A scratched up gold ring crossed his palm. He recognized it as a wedding band. He slipped it into the breast pocket of his pajamas and wrapped the terrycloth robe tighter around himself, shivering all over.

He didn’t care about anything but fleeing the basement and running to his mother. Malcolm backed up and fell into darkness, a sickly sweetness clogging his nostrils and leeching the breath from his lungs.

In the morning, Malcolm awakened in a cold sweat, crying out from nightmares. His head felt like it was split open. The pressure let up when hot tears eeked out of his eyes. Jessica almost kept him in for a sick day after she gave him Motrin for his headache. But Malcolm objected to being babied. Honestly, the thought of staying at home and having to face his father terrified him down to his toes. His mother’s fussing over him and the mental strain of focusing in his classes almost made Malcolm forget what he dreamt. His teacher caught him daydreaming and his friends pushed him around until he joined in and played for real, running in earnest until he was hot with his open coat during recess.

The world righted itself and Malcolm came home, had his snack, finished his schoolwork, spooned down a few bites of dinner, and laid down in his bed to finally finish his Nancy Drew mystery.

The rosary clacked onto his feet. Malcolm scooped it up and shoved it beneath his mattress. He checked the pockets of his robe, found lint. Then he eyed his laundry hamper. An image of a black rectangle flashed through his mind as he opened the laundry hamper. He pulled out the pajamas from last night. He squished the light blue cotton until his hand closed around a hard little circle. In his pocket.

He went to find his sister. “Ainsley, do you want to play dress up?”

“Yes!” Ainsley grabbed his hand and dragged him into their mother’s bedroom. While Ainsley pulled on mother’s silk scarves and hooked the earrings on the tops of her ear lobes, pretending to ready herself for a ball, Malcolm compared his mother’s black pearl platinum ring with the humble gold circle. The gold ring was larger.

The gold ring was too big to be a woman’s. Malcolm knew that his father still wore his wedding band.

Darkness ate into his memories, but Malcolm had what he needed in his pocket, if not his brain. The man’s gold ring lived in his front pocket. His thumb was far too small but it comforted him to have it, to have proof that he could hold. He knew priests didn’t marry and only women were nuns. The clue informed him that someone’s husband had been inside their basement before his own father hid him. Maybe it was someone else’s father. Whoever they were, they believed in God.

The rosary remained buried in his mattress, too obvious for him to be seen with it.

Malcolm couldn’t focus in school or run along in the play yard. He faced the difficult choice of asking his mother to take him to the police station and lock up his father. Anything that happened was his fault. 

Finally, Malcolm snapped and repeated his actions of picking up the phone in the living room. He planned to call the police and confess before bedtime, the hour in which father made him sleep.

The phone was silent, no dial tone. 

“What are you doing, my boy?” asked Martin.

Malcolm put down the receiver.

“Come here,” said Martin. Malcolm shuffled his feet but he went. His father watched his long face and drew his stiff body into a hug. Martin sat onto the sofa and cradled Malcolm in his cozy lap.

“You can tell me what’s wrong, Malcolm. Do you trust me?” assured Martin. He made sure Malcolm looked at him.

“I can’t help you unless I know what you’re hiding from me. Can you trust me?”

Malcolm nodded, relieved. He put the ring, warm from his pocket, into his father’s palm.

Martin ruffled his hair. “Attaboy. Trust your father. I’ll take care of this. It’s going to go away and everything will work out.” 

His father’s beard pressed his cheek as Martin laid a kiss onto Malcolm’s hair. Malcolm knew that his father meant what he said.

“Good. In the meantime, how about you hold onto this for me?” Martin rewarded Malcolm’s honesty with a small gift.

Malcolm beheld the small pocket knife.

“Don’t take it out at school. Don’t show the children. This is not meant for them. I’ll explain to you what you should know because you’re getting pretty big and you’re old enough that I can teach you.”

His faith in his father increased. Malcolm threw himself into the hug this time, believing that things would be okay when they made no sense.

Above all, Malcolm feared that he would forget. His father’s gift armed him and reminded him what he couldn’t forget.

About three days since the French maid announced police at the door, Malcolm saw a young man idling by an orange-ish brown station wagon from his bedroom window. The man was hunched up in a coat that wasn’t thick enough for winter and his beard looked overgrown and messy, like so many homeless. Malcolm wouldn’t have given him a second glance but he caught the young man staring at his window.

He grabbed his bookbag before he went downstairs and outside. If the stranger offered him candy or said that he knew Martin, Malcolm was prepared to kick him and run.

“Hey little Malcolm. Wanna see something that Martin doesn’t want you to see?” The young man cocked his head and flicked his cigarette. He went into the station wagon and started the ignition.

Malcolm peeked into the backseat, half expecting to find a dead man inside. Mother wouldn’t be looking for him until dinner was ready. He had shut his door and left the radio going.

Malcolm knocked on the passenger window. The man gestured at him and Malcolm pulled the door handle. Heated air enclosed him.

“C’mon, brat. You’re letting in the cold.” The man looked ready to floor the accelerator. As the street lamps turned on, Malcolm saw the man’s nerves. Malcolm guessed the man didn’t want the neighbors to see him picking up a little boy.

Malcolm clambered in and tucked his book bag at his feet. “I’m not a brat. My name’s Malcolm.”

“You’ve been good so far. I’m John,” said the man. His smile was pale pink in his staticky untrimmed beard.

John drove them until the hours changed in the station wagon’s clock and the streets became roads which spit them out into a highway long past city limits. He didn’t stop for gas or food. Malcolm didn’t dare ask for a potty break. For a young boy, Malcolm was determined to see the bottom of things, be it inside a large box or the end of the road.

“Is this where my father goes?” asked Malcolm. He was stalling for time.

“The skeletons in the closet,” answered John. “Your father’s waiting.”

Malcolm shoved open the station wagon door, slamming it shut to compensate for his underpowered muscles. His bookbag swung in his hands as he ran to the cabin door, a million questions for his father.

He entered a roughly furnished getaway. The place may have appeared semi-abandoned but it wasn’t caked with filth or piled with dead people. Malcolm’s book bag hit the floor when John lunged for him, choking him with cold hands. Pressure mounted in Malcolm’s throat, spots in his brain, his tongue sticking out horribly. He felt weightless as though he were in the deep end of the pool, his legs kicking uselessly. John wouldn’t let go no matter how sharply Malcolm’s nails rasped his hands. John’s coat sleeves protected him from Malcolm’s futile clawing.

John maintained his strangulation when Malcolm went limp, his terrified eyes bulging, not yet sinking into clarity known to the departed. He drew Malcolm closer, knowing the little boy couldn’t kick.

Malcolm speared the pocketknife into John. The point rustled against John’s coat before lodging into his oblique muscles. 

“Fuck! What the… How the fuck, you little fuck!!” Malcolm’s terror transmitted into John, warbling his speech and he was sobbing blood.

Malcolm saw stars when he hit the floor, arms splayed like a marionette whose strings were cut.

When Malcolm regained consciousness, he shivered and rolled over to curl up from the sharp wind. The winter air almost whistled with how hard it blew. The cabin door was shut. Malcolm’s bookbag had burst open, his folders and workbooks fanned out and blowing around from the wind. He saw the mess from the lightning bolts which lit the room in flashes. 

Malcolm’s throat hurt. The touch of his fingers made his eyes flood. He had no car, no phone, no light switch. For what it was worth, Malcolm was able to stand. He wanted water. He wanted his bed while the sky rumbled with thunder. He dragged a small table to the cabin door and tucked the edge under the knob with the broken lock.

It was so cold that he would freeze to death if he didn’t find blankets. Malcolm fumbled through the night which entrapped him inside the cabin. He was surprised to come upon a steady, electric glow. A thin stream of light from underneath a door. Malcolm splintered his hands but he got the door open. 

He called down the stairs, croaking through the blood which he tasted. “Hello? Hello? Dad?” 

A short gargling cry answered him.

Malcolm limped down the groaning steps. A thousand answers overloaded his brain when he encountered the man in blue, a policeman, strapped to a thick wooden chair.

Malcolm reached for his pocket, but then remembered that John had the knife. Or rather, the knife had John.

Fortunately for Malcolm, maybe not so much for the captive policeman, a little table was covered in various blades and glass vials of clear liquid. Malcolm grabbed a scalpel, dulling the edge and nicking himself to cut away the plastic zip ties.

The policeman spat out the gag. He was very stinky, his breath hitting Malcolm before the body odor of struggling in his bonds. He was the palest person of color that Malcolm had ever seen, possibly from the cold despite his police jacket. Malcolm saw his name tagged on his uniform but he didn’t know how to sound out the letters.

“Thanks, kid. Who’re you?”

“My name is Malcolm Whitly, Mr. Police Officer,” said Malcolm.

“Whitly? Are you…?”

“Yes. Dr. Whitly’s my father. You have to arrest him,” said Malcolm.

The officer barked a laugh, his body language indicating, “With what? No gun, no cuffs, no cruiser.” 

“Let’s focus on getting you home, kid. Your mother must be worried as all hell.” The officer winced. “Don’t say hell. That’s a grownup word, okay?”

“I think we have bigger problems than my language, Mr. Police Officer.”

“Call me Gil. Do you have water?”

“Sorry, I don’t. It might be snowing outside. Maybe wait for it to melt?”

They both looked up when thunder rumbled.

“When it rains, it pours, huh kid?” said Gil.

Gil kept him talking, ascertained how he arrived at the cabin, pity and anger apparent on his face. He looked madder when he saw the red marks on Malcolm’s neck. Though he was considerably weakened by the deprivations following his abduction, Gil seemed to care about Malcolm. Gil knew how to start a fire inside the cabin, using one of Malcolm’s graded test papers.

Gil let him go to sleep. Malcolm woke up to Gil looking slightly ashamed of himself eating Malcolm’s snacks from his book bag. Malcolm had cherry fruit bars which he didn’t eat because he preferred blueberry fruit bars.

“Sorry kid. I’ll get you breakfast. I can’t just fill up with snow, you know?”

“You’ve been missing for days, Gil. It’s all my fault. I called you to the house. My father got you because of me.”

“You made the right call. I was dumb when I accepted a drink from him,” argued Gil.

“Look, I haven’t seen your father since that night. Someone just comes in and turns the lights on when I’m drugged up to my eyeballs,” said Gil. “He didn’t hurt me any worse. Believe me, I’d be yelling my head off.”

“You made the right call. Let’s focus on what we do next. OK?” 

Gil’s hand touched the back of his head, smoothing down his messy brown hair.

Malcolm smiled a little and nodded. “OK, Gil.”

There were no blankets in the cabin, but there was plenty of clean tarp. Gil and Malcolm wrapped themselves in tarp to protect themselves in the freezing gusts. They hiked until a snow plow spotted them, blue tarp clear as day in the snow banks.

* * *

NYPD put away Dr. Whitly for first-degree crimes against a police officer though too many of the murder cases wouldn’t stick without living eyewitness and circumstantial arguments. Between Gil’s testimony and the rosary which Malcolm found, the Whitly name was ruined.

But the money was pretty damn good. Gil and Jackie accepted a personal check from Jessica Whitly. Personal damages were settled outside of court under the supervision of a mediator. Jessica shook hands with both of them and Jackie hugged her.

He and Jackie bought their house. 

They were setting the dinner table when Jackie heard the knocks. She threw open the door. Ainsley and Malcolm ran inside despite Jessica’s sharp reminders.

Gil didn’t agree with Jessica’s decision to keep the murder house, thought she was bats, knew that anyone married to her husband would be crazy.

“Get some help, honey,” said Jackie. Her soft words belied her piercing gaze. “They stay with us while you get yourself together.”

“I am. Thank you. Thank you so much.” Jessica looked ready to bolt.

“You pretty much paid for this house. Might as well use it,” quipped Gil.

“Family dinner. This means you, chicka.” Jackie pulled Jessica in, made Gil so proud of her.

Gil determined that he wouldn’t turn away anyone who needed a safe and warm place to live. If it was within his power, he would go out of his way to help, especially for family.

**Author's Note:**

> What began as scrawling in discord goblin server turned into this. And now... back to my regularly scheduled smut.


End file.
